February 28, 2021 by Don Hubin, Ph.D., Chair, National Board of Directors
I’m not an historian and I’m certainly not an expert in Black history. But I don’t want Black History Month to pass without some notice in the NPO Blog of the ways in which the history of American law and policy has functioned—sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally—to undermine the Black family.
The institution of slavery—American’s original sin—did immeasurable harm to Black families not just during the 246 years of chattel slavery in the U.S. but for generations after emancipation. Families were often split up, especially those enslaved on small plantations, where children were 49% more likely to live in single-parent families than were children enslaved on large plantations (Miller, see also Dunaway). Family separation was so traumatic to enslaved people that it contributed to enslaved people taking their own lives (Snyder).
Wealth plays an enormous role in the stability of families and the wealth gap between White families and Black families is enormous. It is well known that there is a racial income gap in the U.S. but that gap pales in comparison to the wealth gap; the wealth gap is quite large even for Black and White families with equal incomes (Brookings Institute). There are many reasons for this. A significant factor, though, was government laws and policies that prevented Black families from accumulating wealth (Hamilton & Logan). These laws and policies included allowing restrictive covenants, which prohibited home sales to Blacks, redlining, which defined Black communities as unsafe, thus reducing property values, and more. (Details of this shameful history are related in Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.)
In addition to these government policies, there was also a pattern of racial discrimination by private actors, including racial discrimination in housing and employment. There were, as well, mob actions that undermined progress in Black families’ wealth, such as the little-known (in the White community) race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921 that destroyed what was known as “The Black Wall Street,” one of the most affluent Black communities in America at the time.
These legal and extra-legal impediments to the accumulation of wealth by Black families contributed to instability of the family unit. Certainly poor families can stay together and wealthy families can split up. But the inability to achieve a level of wealth that provides some security stresses family relationships. As the Tavistock Institute puts it, “the evidence is clear that income does matter—and that poverty and lack of money is in fact a major cause of relationship breakdown, as well as a consequence of it” (emphasis added).
There are, though, more direct ways in which government policies have undermined all poor families and, so, disproportionately Black families. And some of these policies were in programs that were designed to assist poor families.
The roots of public assistance to the poor in the U.S. are deep. After the Civil War, there were programs to assist veterans and their families (Skocpol). From the 1890s to the early 1920s, there were programs to provide pensions for widowed mothers (Skocpol). The Great Depression, though, was the beginning of large-scale Federal anti-poverty programs.
For decades, many of these programs applied a “man-in-the-house” rule. Under this rule, “a child who otherwise qualified for welfare benefits was denied those benefits if the child’s mother was living with, or having relations with, any single or married able-bodied male” (“Man-in-the-House Rule”). The thinking was that if there was a man in the house, he, not the government, should be supporting the woman and her children. And the rule was applied even if the man was not the father of the child.
The man-in-the-house rule meant that, often, the best thing that a father could do for his children financially (not emotionally), was to leave the house. And a single mother was discouraged from starting a relationship with another man, as well.
This misguided rule was struck down by a Supreme Court ruling in 1968 (King v. Smith). But prior to that time, and probably for sometime after that because of the lag in people’s understanding and trusting of the new rules, “the no-man-in-the-house rule actually encouraged the breakup of stable, two-parent families” (Baltimore Sun).
The saga of policies that hurt Black families continues today.
Black children are far more likely than other children to be taken into the foster care system. Prior to the enactment of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997, there was an emphasis on kinship care when parents were unable to care for their children and on family reunification if the inability was temporary. “ASFA, however, effectively eliminated the “reasonable efforts” [at family reunification] requirement and focused on adoption as the best solution to ensure permanent placement of children in foster care” (White).
Furthermore, as regular readers of this Blog know, poor families—and this means disproportionately Black families—where the parents live apart are hammered by unreasonable child support obligations. The public acceptance of high child support obligations for poor fathers and its support for draconian enforcement measures were fueled in part by negative stereotypes of the “deadbeat dad” and the “welfare mom” (Cammett). Unreasonable child support obligations and severe penalties hurt poor fathers and create barriers to their being involved in their children’s lives (Urban Wire, The Guardian, Center for Family Policy and Practice, and Brito, Pate, & Wong).
Finally, the gender bias in family courts is well documented. (This is certainly not to deny that mothers are subjected to horrible court decisions, or even to deny that gender bias can work against mothers, as when a judge assumes it’s best for children to be with the dad because he has remarried and his new wife is staying at home.) But there’s reason to believe that Black fathers experience even greater bias in family courts. At least that is the opinion of Joleena Louis, a domestic relations attorney in New York City.
None of this should blind us to the fact that a great many Black families are thriving. Many Black fathers, regardless of their income or wealth and whether together with the mother or not, are caring for and supporting their children. But neither should we be blind to the fact that the history of government laws and policies have created impediments to the Black family, and especially to Black fathers, that make such success more challenging.